ICAC told investor expected $850k bonus

A business associate of former union leader John Maitland said he expected to receive a bonus of $850,000 in the months before then NSW Labor mining minister
Ian Macdonald
gave the men a lucrative coal exploration licence, documents tendered at a corruption inquiry reveal.

Newcastle entrepreneur
Craig Ransley
, the co-founder of private company Doyles Creek Mining and a central figure in the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s investigation, wrote in a June 2008 loan application that he would receive the money between July and August. He added he could be making as much as $1 million a year in dividends by the end of the year.

In a letter dated August 21, 2008, Mr Macdonald invited Doyles Creek Mining, then chaired by Mr Maitland, to apply exclusively for the licence over land near Newcastle .

The inquiry has heard the licence was granted effectively on this date. A deed formalising the deal was signed by the minister at an $1800 dinner on December 15.

Mr Ransley wrote in the Westpac loan application, signed on June 21, 2008, and tendered at the ICAC on Monday, that his stake in Doyles Creek was worth just $500 but the company had a potential value of $100 million.

Doyles Creek Mining was acquired by NuCoal Resources, then a listed shell company, in early 2010. The inquiry has heard Mr Ransley made almost $15 million from selling his shares in NuCoal, from an initial investment of $318,000.

Mr Maitland and the pair’s business associate, Andrew Poole, also made millions from the deal.

The ICAC is investigating whether Mr Macdonald conferred an improper benefit on the three men.

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The loan application shows Mr Ransley and his wife, Nera, led a lavish lifestyle even before the granting of the coal licence.

Their assets as at June 2008 included a luxury mobile phone collection valued at $150,000, a $285,000 Porsche and $400,000 in jewellery.

The inquiry has heard that Mr Maitland, a former national secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, lobbied Mr Macdonald to grant the coal licence as part of a plan for a training mine at Doyles Creek near Newcastle.

But a separate loan application document, tendered on Monday, said the company’s principals had “no long- term intention of operating a coalmine and it is likely the land and exploration licence . . . would be sold to a large operator for a significance [sic] financial gain". Westpac relationship manager John Baxter gave evidence that he dealt with Mr Ransley and Mr Poole and “no one else". Mr Ransley’s solicitor. Paul Wenk, said his client denied making the claim.

Mike Chester, a former NuCoal director and current director of Doyles Creek Mining who is also being investigated for corruption, spent a torrid morning in the witness box on Monday.

“You told a lie last week when confronted with a difficulty you couldn’t address," counsel assisting the inquiry, Peter Braham, SC, told Mr Chester at one point. “You’re doing it again now."

Mr Chester denied telling lies, but admitted he had “improvised" some evidence.

In a private interview last year, he told the ICAC he had made claims to the government about Doyles Creek’s financial backing that were “incorrect".